Italy: Forgive me...

...for I am in Italy and I am going to tell you about a meal.

We arrived in Rome without a guidebook, but with a list as long as your arm of recommendations from friends who have explored Rome enough to find the hidden treasures every food-and-culture obsessed traveler seeks. Go to La Lucia and eat the coniglio caccitora (thank you Stephanie). Stay in a monastery, they're cheap, clean, and oh the nuns! (thank you Evan). Pizzarium, west of the Vatican, has the best pizza in the world (thank you Max's mom). The problem with our tome of juicy insider knowledge was that we tried to do everything on each person's list,eat every dish at each food establishment, and all under the brutal Roman sun when any sensible being with any say in the matter must have been curled up in a siesta from 11 AM to 5 PM. What I mean to say is that we over-Romed. And now, from a hillside just outside of Rome, I have a moment to share with you. It is from Stephanie's carefully crafted list of delights, and it involved inhumane amounts of hearty Roman peasant food.

The Romana who served us did not beat about the bush. Smoker's voice and teeth to match, stringy hair and sparkling eyes, she smacked both palms on our plastic sidewalk table--had their been a sidewalk--and leaned forward, offering us our only choice of the evening: "Bianco o rosso?!" I am not being coy in withholding the name of the restaurant; we just couldn't find any marker that announced it. It is pressed into the side of a hill in Trastevere, at the foot of the Janiculum stairs, at the end of Vicolo del Cedro. That is enough if you ever want to find it.

We chose rosso, and soon the table wine and pitcher of good Roman tap water plunked down onto the green-and-white plastic table cloth. Almost immediately the first wave of food was upon us--bruschetta with thick chunks of tomatoes, languid, savory beans dissolving into their savory sauce, spicy mashed potatoes that were a startling fiery orange. We were still smiling when the pasta bowl arrived--simple parmigiano and pepper. But when the next two bowls of pasta arrived, panic nestled into my stomach somewhere between the bread and the pasta and the potatoes. The only solution was more rosso.

 Pasta Anguish

 More Rosso

When the segundi presented themselves, one squid one chicken, we were practically lashing ourselves in penitence. We could not eat it all. The squid was nothing to write home about (ahaha), but the chicken tasted so much like chicken it was almost indecent. With the arrival of dessert came the arrival of even more diners. More tables drawn onto the street, more family, friends, regulars. It felt very much like we were crashing a neighborhood party. With the anise biscuits, limoncello, and grappa, and months of catching up to do, Kate and I barely made it back to the convent by curfew.

Limoncello. Grappa. Anise Biscuits.

Meh. Squid

I could go on like this. I could describe every topping on the finest pizza I've ever had (so far). I could tell you about watching the fruit crates roll into the gelateria and the gelato and sorbetto roll out (fragoline di bosco! how you torture me!), but it is already feeling a bit too nostalgic. We have moved on, relocated to a 'farm' outside the city, which is really the vegetable patch of an old gentleman called Claudio who was the director of a local TV channel until Berlusconi bought it up. He is 72 and works in the garden with his pacemaker despite the protestations of his fluttery American wife. We work alongside Filip and Anna, the sweetest Swedish couple you can ever imagine. We call Claudio 'Cloudy,' which with his shock of white hair and limited range of hearing, is the perfectest term of endearment. It is hot. The meals are long, and the siesta is longer. Life is good.

The DR: On Men, Food, and Beauty

Preamble: It is a great irony to lose one´s voice when one is trying to learn a language. At the same time it’s a bit of a reprieve—a sanctioned break from struggling through mutilated sentences. It’s a break for those who have to listen to me, too! I’m drinking lots of tea with honey and lime. All will be better soon.

And now on to what you've all be waiting for.

*On men

Darío! Ha! For the record, Darío is no tiguere. In Ecuador they were called ‘tiburones’—sharks. Here they are called ‘tigueres’—tigers. They are guys who hang out on corners and say enticing things like, ‘Hey girlfriend!’ or ‘Hey [insert person’s color]’ or, for my benefit, and this is one of my personal favorites, ‘American people! I love you baby!’ No, Darío is not a tiguere, he’s a guy who works with Loida in politics, managing a team of people who…and that’s where I stopped understanding what he was saying when he explained what he does.

It was an awkward situation to begin with. The two of us were swimming with mucha gente. Me, Darío, the people who had brought us together, and half the rest of the DR. We were in the mountains, escaping the heat of the city. 

 This was taken when the crowd had subsided considerably

The funny thing is, no one here has any tolerance for cold, so even though I thought the water was lovely (and we all know how wimpy I am), Darío, who is a great hunk of man, was shivering visibly. I asked if he wanted to go back to the table, gesturing toward the terrace above where other people from our party were hanging out with the our bags. He thought I had asked him to “dar una vuelta” which I guess in this case is go for a walk around the swimming hole. Whatever. I said yes to the question he thought I had posed. Vamo. So we’re chatting, me practically naked in my bikini, him fully clothed, having gone swimming in his shorts and T shirt. What do we do for a living? How do we know Loida? Nothing intimate whatsoever. Then the inevitable. He asks if I have a boyfriend. I pause, then say, “Vamos a decir que sí” Let’s say I do. Of course I immediately wished I’d just said, “Si” and left it at that, but his response? Not ‘What do you mean by that?’ or ‘How long have you been together?’ or anything like that. He says, “I like that you’re honest about it. It’s probably just as well. You’re only here for a month and I’m very sensitive. I get attached to people.” He took my blank stare of utter bewilderment to be a linguistic problem, and repeated what he'd said slowly and more clearly. It was all I could do to keep it together. I smiled and nodded and led the way back to our group. Awkward silence plagued us from that moment forth.

*On food

Ayayay the fried food.  It is a test of a person’s metabolism.

 Breakfast with Luz: eggs with yucca, or mangu, or tostones whatever strikes her fancy. 

Dinner with Maria: Empanadas

 Vacation food I: Coconut on Playa Rincón

 Vacation food II: Fish, Rice, and Beans on Playa Rincón

Playa Rincón

*On beauty

Obesity and beauty are most definitely not mutually exclusive categories here. There are plenty of flacos and flaquitas, but big boned boys and girls get down and dirty on the dance floor, too. And I mean dirty. And everyone and their mother gets…appreciated…by any audience. There always seem to be people watching. On the street, in the discotecas, in the park. They notice, they comment, the feedback is always good. I wonder why people devote so much time to preening, when they’re just as likely to get attention walking around with rollers in their hair as when they’re all made up, with straight and smooth and shiny locks. I love seeing people in rollers, incidentally. Cracks me up.

 

La Santica in Rollers

And that´s quite enough for now.